This blog entry is now HISTORICAL as DarkSky have pulled a fast one on everyone except Apple users. A later blog entry here has more information on alternatives. One of the many things that Node-Red makes easy to capture – is the weather – and until recently, all credit was…
The Script (Original Article)
It occurs to me that I regularly refer to my “script” – without ever having detailed what it does! I’ll fix that now. The “script” is something Aidan and I originally put together for our own use, mainly to help when running home control systems – to simplify Debian Jessie…
Icons
I am always on the lookout for icons, be it for my Node-Red projects (Dashboard) or to replace icons on my Windows Desktop or for other projects – sometimes I need .PNG but in the case of Windows desktop – they should be .ICO files. So on a random hunt…
Node-Red Dashboard Thoughts
Or put another way – how to use Node-Red Dashboard without a mouse cursor or a menu – on a touch screen. I’ve been playing with the touch-LCD screen on a Raspberry Pi – this was a Chinese one – quite cheap.. “5 inch HDMI LCD V2” – an 800*480…
Yule Be Impressed
Or not – as the case may be. This is my attempt to revive an old, bust Christmas decoration. The original Christmas candle decoration was a white casing, simply filled with static, old-school filament lighting – and as happens one of them went by the by. We don’t keep spares…
NPM Update Status
If you are a Node-Red fan (and if not – why not) – you’ll know that the NODES – i.e. the modules that are provided with Node-Red or that people like myself create – get updated every now and then. And it is a pain in the bum to keep…
Playing with WIO
We’ve had a very busy weekend – a friend of mine, Jonathan who’s another gadget guy stopped over and while the girls went shopping we spent the weekend been buried away in the man-cave experimenting. Firstly – a link for you – if you have an LG TV – here’s…
Grove LCD RGB Backlight
Now, before anyone says anything – no I’m not advertising Seeed or their Grove stuff. It just so happens that over the weekend my pal brought some of their stuff over to have a play with and I was particularly taken by the LCD display. This is a typical Hitachi-style…
Weekend fun
One of the toys I’ve been playing with this weekend is the Amazon Dash – contributed by visiting read JAY when he popped over to see me last week. Oh, before I start – anyone using the SOURCE of my ESP code – (not Arduino IDE) – if you fancy…
What is Klikr?
Today I became the proud owner of a Klikr – my friend Jonathan dropped one in for me – so, this afternoon I decided to investigate. Here it is seen photographed next to my Samsung Gear Classic watch on my normal size hand to put it into perspective. I have…
Weather 2 Board and ESP8266
NOT the cheapest board on the planet, I was handed a couple of these little boards by a friend this weekend.. the weather-2 board. The board uses 2 i2c chips – the BME280 which as you may know is a miraculous little chip offering temperature, humidity and pressure readings all…
The Mighty T3
Some time ago, I wrote about the FriendlyArm NanoPi M1, a simple, low cost board which seems to hold it’s own against the Raspberry Pi2 in all but GPIO control – that’s not to say there is anything wrong with the GPIO but you have to write your own stuff…
A Little Dashboard Something
Something for the weekend sir? How about a simple means to get visual and tactile feedback from node-red-dashboard buttons? Or rather than large buttons – icons you may create or obtain yourself in a node-red-dashboard template. To backtrack: For my own home control endeavours, I’ve been using a number of…
Dazzling LED ESP8266
So… the other day, a parcel turned up for me – some samples from Itead. One of the boxes contained 4 strips of LEDS and a controller. The strips are maybe 20mm wide aluminium with staggered SMT LEDs on them – first a warm LED, then a COLD LED then..…
Amazon and the UK
I thought you might like to see a communication with Amazon and my responses.. I am pretty annoyed as it is not the first time an American company has launch stuff around the world – keen to get sales going but not so keen to provide international customers with the…
New This Weekend
Over the weekend I have added a new MENU item to the blog – COMMENTS – thanks to MrShark for that idea. Menu top right. The page shows the last 100 comments which will hopefully be useful. I’ve also added an experimental e-newsletter (again on request, several people said they’d…
How Not To Do PCBs
My usual stance is to be nice to Itead, I’ve been dealing with them for some time and although I have absolutely no commercial or personal tie up with them, they do send product samples from time to time as do many others – and I usually end up writing…
Size Matters… Neo AIR
When it comes to size, this one is as good as any… the FriendlyArm Nano Pi Neo Air. You’ve probably read my blog about the Nano Pi Neo, a device I can only describe as “cute” because of it’s really small size – but powerful non-the-less. Well, the AIR version…
I2C Expansion for Pi and ESP8266
Want 64 GPIO pins on your ESP8266 or Raspberry Pi? Read on. If like me you are not THAT familiar with I2c, you might find the results of my experiments interesting and perhaps even useful. If like me you are not THAT familiar with I2c, you might find the results…
Toying with HA-BRIDGE
Thanks to readers in here I’m having a play with HA-Bridge to act as a device gateway between my home control (generally ESP8266) devices and Amazon Echo. I’m only scratching the surface and haven’t gotten past “Alexa, turn X on”, “Alexa turn X off” and “Alexa set X to 30%” …